Alcohol Action Ireland press release, Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI), the national independent advocate to reduce alcohol harm, welcomes tomorrow’s Second Stage introduction of the Public Health (Alcohol) (Amendment) Bill 2025 in Dáil Éireann by Pádraig Rice TD (Social Democrats) but is disappointed to note the government’s intention to oppose the Bill.
The Bill aims “to amend the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 by restricting the advertising of alcohol-free and low-alcohol products bearing any statement of any trade description or designation, or a display or other publication of a trademark, emblem, marketing image or logo, of an alcohol product with the aim of direct or indirect effect of promoting an alcohol product”.
The Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 (PHAA) has two main goals: to reduce alcohol consumption at a population level and to limit children’s exposure to alcohol marketing, which is known to be a key driver of both initiating alcohol use by children and increasing use if they have already started drinking. This important legislation, based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization including controls on pricing and marketing, is strongly supported by AAI. We appreciate the work of the Department of Health and successive ministers over many years in bringing a public health approach to alcohol for the first time against the trenchant opposition of vested interests. The PHAA is a sensible approach in a country where 1,500 people are in hospital every day because of alcohol and 50,000 children in Ireland start to drink every year.
AAI CEO Dr Sheila Gilheany said: “This Bill is not about the nature of zero alcohol products, that is a discussion for another time. It is about protecting children from exposure to alcohol advertising by proxy. This is a child protection measure, one which everyone in the Oireachtas agreed on in 2018 with the passage of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act.
“Zero alcohol products are not being aggressively advertised because the alcohol industry wants people to drink less. They are being pushed for three reasons: to increase main brand alcohol sales, to challenge the market share of soft drinks, and to sidestep child protection measures on where the industry can advertise their brands.
“Even the industry admits this. In their 2025 paper ‘Zero-alcohol’ products and the guise of responsibility, Edwardes, Keric, and Stafford revealed a striking divergence between how zero-alcohol products are described publicly, as tools for moderation, and how they are presented in industry-facing publications, as tools to drive market growth and increase main brand sales. The Director of Heineken UK stated: “There is no limit to when you can drink… Heineken 0.0… If you think about all the occasions that people drink a soft drink today, we can be in that market.”. This was compounded by Heineken’s own marketers acknowledging that advertising their non-alcoholic product had a beneficial effect on the Heineken main brand. When the alcohol industry openly admits that zero-alcohol marketing boosts sales of core alcohol products, the public health implications are impossible to ignore.
“Research by Richard Purves et al. in the International Journal of Drug Policy, tellingly titled “I just saw the alcohol brand, I never really thought of the zeros”: Young people’s views of NoLo and alibi alcohol sponsorship, interviewed children as part of a comprehensive study of young people’s views of zero-alcohol product sponsorship. Children as young as 14 were able to identify Guinness as the sponsor of the Six Nations rugby championship, noting that Guinness was highly visible during matches and that they had seen advertising around the stadium and on the pitch. One child simply said: “I just saw the alcohol brand, I never really thought of the zeros.”.
“In the Irish context, we have just witnessed a Six Nations rugby championship with Guinness emblazoned across the middle of the pitch, something restricted under the PHAA to protect children from alcohol advertising but permitted because two zeros are added to the end of the brand name. Those two zeros legally mean that Guinness is not classified as an alcohol brand.
“The evidence is clear: exposure to alcohol marketing causes youth drinking, encourages children to drink at an earlier age, and increases the quantities they consume. A new Australian study by Ashlea Bartram et al. has shown that exposure of teenagers to zero-alcohol drinks has a similar effect to exposure to alcoholic drinks, concluding that “regulatory approaches that seek to limit adolescents’ exposure to alcohol should also extend to zero-alcohol drinks.”.
“Further research from Asia, examining brand advertising and brand sharing of alcoholic and non-alcoholic products among young Thai people, found that shared branding increases brand familiarity and affects brand recognition and awareness. This research also revealed that young people “…who saw the logos of companies that sell both alcoholic and zero-alcohol beverages were found to associate the logos primarily with the alcoholic versions of the products, indicating that zero-alcohol beverages are working as advertising vehicles for parent companies…”. The research concluded that early exposure to alcohol brand sharing increases brand familiarity and, among other factors, affects drinking attitudes and purchase intentions in young people.
“Ireland has a long and proud history of being world leaders when it comes to public health legislation, such as with the smoking ban and with the PHAA, and this Bill is another opportunity to show global leadership.
“It is also worth remembering that vapes were touted by the tobacco industry as a smoking cessation product and we now have an epidemic of children vaping.
“Similarly, the alcohol industry likes to portray zero-alcohol products as a means of moderation and yet we now have a situation where youth drinking in Ireland has surged from 66% to 78% in the last decade, and when drinking is initiated it is accompanied by high levels of particularly risky and hazardous consumption – 64% regularly binge drink and more than one in three young drinkers has an AUD.
“The PHAA has brought about some success in helping to reduce Ireland’s alcohol consumption – down 18% since its passage. However, in the area of youth exposure to alcohol marketing its modest controls on the amount of alcohol marketing that children see are being subverted by tagging on a 0.0 to the alcohol brand. What is the point of our legislation if it is simply being overridden by industry actors? The alcohol industry will try to use any perceived loophole to get around regulation on their product. The PHAA was designed to protect children and we need to start looking at zero-alcohol advertising through their eyes – the 0.0 makes 0.0 difference to them. It’s 100% marketing.
“As it stands, the current legislation is not working to protect children and young people from pervasive advertising and marketing of alcohol. This needs to change and this Bill is another step in that process.”
ENDS
AAI’s updated report, The Sale and Marketing of Zero-Alcohol Drinks, is available here
